How to Install Sensu Monitoring Tool on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Welcome to our guide on How to Install Sensu Monitoring Tool on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Sensu is an open-source, full-stack monitoring tool suitable for any kind of dynamic operating environments. It is a simple, scalable and malleable framework that helps you compose the monitoring system you need.

Introduction to Sensu Monitoring Tool

Sensu is capable of monitoring public, private, and hybrid cloud, and container-based environments. It is written in Ruby and uses RabbitMQ for queuing check events and requests. Data that needs persistent storage like client information are stored in Redis. Sensu ships with a ton of plugins for monitoring common services.

How Sensu Works

Sensu uses a client-server model where all systems to be monitored runs a sensu client software. This client application is responsible for executing local checks, managing client subscription and registration, and fulfilling checks requested by the Sensu Server. The agent reports the results of a check and the server will take action based on the results, e.g sending a notification message to the user if the service is down.

Install Sensu Monitoring Tool on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

In this section, I’ll show you the steps to install the Sensu Monitoring Tool on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. I assume you already have a running Ubuntu 18.04 server, it can be a VM locally, in the Cloud, or a dedicated server.

Step 1: Set server hostname, ntp, and update

Always start your installations by updating system package to the latest version.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo reboot

Wait for the server to come up then set hostname

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname sensu.example.com

Setup NTP and Timezone

It is good to have NTP configured on both Sensu server and agents for correct timestamp on all data.